The Seville court investigating the emergency contracts signed by the Andalusian Health Service (SAS) between 2020 and 2024 for an alleged crime of prevarication has resumed the case this month, after the Christmas break, with two resolutions that represent one of cal and another of sand for the three accused managers.
In a ruling, Judge Javier Santamaría has rejected the request of the defendants – the current manager of the SAS, Valle García, and his predecessors in office, Diego Vargas and Miguel Ángel Guzmán – to archive the investigation of the contracts hand in hand with private clinics, without advertising or competitive competition, relying on the legal framework enabled in the pandemic when it was already repealed. “The dismissal is not appropriate at this procedural moment without prejudice to the proceedings carried out,” argues the magistrate in a writing, to which this newspaper has had access.
In the same ruling, the judge also knocks down the request made by the legal representation of the SAS manager to raise from 5,000 to 15,000 euros the amount of the bail that the 30 deputies of the Andalusian PSOE parliamentary group who signed the complaint.
With this writing, both the court investigating the case of the health contracts and the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office continue with the investigation, which covers from 2020 – the first year of the pandemic – until 2024, when the current manager signs the latest addendums with an extension of expense of the original Emergency File (110/2021) from which the main cause emanates.
The judge’s decision is a response to the document registered on December 18 by the procedural representation of the SAS manager and her two predecessors, with which they intended to close the investigation. The three defendants requested the immediate dismissal of the case as a “reply to the uncertain and unfair incriminating story that is promoted by the plaintiffs on the occasion of the emergency processing of the health contracts of the Andalusian Health Service that is the subject of these actions,” the document stated. .
The lawyers of the last three managers of the SAS in the Andalusian Government asked the aforementioned court that, in “the light of what was stated” in their brief, “the file of the case be agreed upon,” as well as that, “by virtue of article 280 of the Lecrim” -Criminal Procedure Law-, each of the plaintiffs was required through their procedural representation in the case to provide each of them bail “in the amount of 15,000 euros in order to respond to each of those investigated for the economic consequences of the result of this process,” said his request, now rejected.
Stopping the PSOE accusation strategy
Neither of the two objectives have been achieved. The defendants have hit a wall, but so have the plaintiffs. In parallel to this ruling that rejects the closure of the investigation, Santamaría signs another order that represents a blow to the PSOE’s procedural strategy, as a party to the accusation.
The judge has rejected the latest request to expand the complaint registered by the socialists, with which they intended to expand the investigation into the emergency contracts to the eight Andalusian provinces, providing the reports of the auditors in the delegated centers of the SAS, which question openly the legality of the contracting procedure until 2024, justifying itself in the pandemic.
The magistrate does not go into the substance of the matter, but emphasizes that “he is not competent to hear about possible provincial irregularities that have no relationship with the central services” of the Andalusian Health Service (SAS). Therefore, it is agreed to reject for processing the extension of the complaint formulated by the PSOE last December.
The aforementioned court has agreed to the inadmissibility of said extension of the complaint in an order dated last Tuesday, January 7, consulted by Europa Press and whose resolution “is not firm” since against it “it is possible to file an appeal for reform and /or appeal.”
The legal representation of the socialists is now analyzing whether to appeal the judge’s decision or, on the contrary, replicate its complaint in the investigative courts of seven other Andalusian provinces (Málaga is the only one that returned to ordinary contracting, while the rest continued to extend the hand-picking of million-dollar allocations to private clinics).
The order details that the procedural representation of the socialist parliamentarians presented, on December 5, 2024, a document expanding the complaint against the current managing director of the SAS and her two immediate predecessors in said responsibility, which gave rise to the preliminary proceedings that the same investigating court initiated in October, where alleged “non-compliance” is noted regarding “contracts signed by the different health logistics contracting platforms or provincial purchasing centers “who are in charge of contracting the health centers of the respective province.”
These two movements by the judge and the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office have been put forward, in equal parts, by both the Government of Juan Manuel Moreno and the main opposition party and author of the complaint. The first defends that the case is deflating, appealing to the magistrate’s decision not to extend the investigation to the provinces. The socialists, on the other hand, highlight that the judge has refused to file the case, as requested by the accused managers, “because there are clear criminal signs in the documentation that is already in the possession of Anti-Corruption.”
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